First Sunday of Advent by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on by gracememorialpdx

Lessons:

Jeremiah 33:14-16

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

Psalm 25:1-9

 

Be on guard, Jesus says, so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.

Or that day will catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.

It is the start of Advent, the start of a new church year, the start of a year with the Gospel of Luke. And as we begin, this is Jesus’ advice to us, maybe his command to us.

What does Jesus mean?

I am familiar with two-thirds of the things that Jesus speaks against. I know what Jesus means when he speaks of drunkenness. And I know as well about the worries of this life – gosh, do we all know about the worries of this life. But I am less sure about the first item in this forbidden trinity, about dissipation. Dissipation isn’t a word that most of us reach for all that often. Dissipate – this word in verb form – we drawn on a little more regularly. Smoke dissipates, so do clouds in the sky, maybe an audience dissipates when the curtain comes down and the lights go up. But in noun form, in the form that the New Revised Standard Version translates Jesus’ word, this word doesn’t just mean things moving apart and vanishing from sight.

Dissipation has the connotation of squandering something.

The Greek word that the NRSV renders as dissipation is kraipalē, so the ancient root of our contemporary word crapulence. And to leaf through one Bible translation after another is to find that no one can entirely agree about what kraipalē means in English. Various translators, the ones who don’t reach for the word dissipation, tell us that kraipalē means a drunken headache. Others tell us that it means carousing. The King James Version, with its lovely poetic English, offers us the old-school word surfeiting. Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of the Bible called the Message, uses the word parties.

Actually, it’s worth pausing here for a second to hear Peterson’s rendition of Jesus’ sentence in its entirety. In the Message, Jesus says:

Do not let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping.

Think about that as our society enters into the lead up to Christmas, a time that is basically defined by parties and drinking and shopping.

Maybe this constellation of translational possibilities of kraipalē, maybe Peterson’s full-on sentence, get us a little closer to what Jesus means in this verse.

My sense is that we can say with some certainty that when Jesus says, Don’t let your hearts be weighed down with kraipalē and drunkenness and the worries of the life, Jesus doesn’t mean, “Don’t go to parties.” We know that Jesus loves partying with strangers and friends.

We can probably say as well that Jesus doesn’t mean, “No one should ever drink.”  We know that Jesus loves to eat and drink. And besides, he doesn’t say doesn’t say “don’t drink,” he says, “don’t be weighed down with drunkenness.” Alcoholism is real: there are people whom I love and respect who must not and cannot drink. And that acknowledged, enjoying wine in moderation with your friends on a Saturday night is a really different thing than polishing off a dozen beers by yourself on a couch on a Tuesday afternoon. Drinking on the one hand: being weighed down with drunkenness on other.

Jesus is not, in other words, commanding us to engage in a humourless or a puritanical life. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say that when Jesus says don’t be weighed down in the worries of the life, he doesn’t even mean that we shouldn’t worry. Jesus is fully human, and so he knows that a certain amount of worrying is part of being alive. At the end of his life, Jesus will sweat blood in the garden because of his deep and entirely understandable worry about what is to come when Judas and the soldiers arrive.

I wonder if what Jesus means in this sentence is something like this:

Don’t do stuff that leaves you numb. 

Now, the popular writer and researcher Brené Brown would be quick to jump in  here and say that absolutely everyone engages in a certain amount numbing. Pain is the price of admission being alive and we all respond to it by – what? – logging on to Facebook, eating muffins, gambling, playing video games, staying frantically busy, shopping, the list goes on.

A certain amount of numbing is permitted, it is okay. After a hard or a disappointing day, you are allowed to apologise to yourself, to give yourself a treat, by turning on Netflix and eating bonbons.

The problem comes shows up when you are still on Netflix at 3am and just vibrating with the sugar in your bloodstream.

That moment at 3am (maybe you know that moment, or maybe you have an equivalent to it in your life) is when we approach or cross the boundary between reasonably healthy numbing on one side and obsession or compulsion or even addiction on the other. This is when we are numbing instead of living our lives, numbing instead of engaging with God and creation and neighbour. This is the moment, when these activities or things that are officially pleasures – Netflix, sugar, booze, eating, whatever – end up robbing us of our joy.

Most of us sense the joy-robbing nature of deep numbing, sometimes even as we do it. I’ve had the fork holding the piece of cake partway in my mouth and said, Why am I doing this? I’m going to feel awful after eating this and the sugar and the suspicious icing hits my bloodstream. I’ve been the guy still in front of a screen in the middle of the night saying Why am I still here? This stopped being fun hours ago.

What Brown’s research has found is that when we articulate that why, whether it is in the moment or the next morning, we are naming the reality that deep numbing comes at a deep cost. That’s because human beings are wired in such a way, we are created in such a way, that we cannot numb the valleys without also numbing the peaks.

I guess I’m talking a bunch about screens this morning because they are one of the principal forms of numbing of our time. Through constant use of phone, through constantly being in front of a TV, we seek to eradicate silence and the sadness that can come with silence. The strategy works. The silence is gone and the sadness gets crowded out for a while. But what else gets crowded out when the silence is gone? Silence – in the woods, in a chair in the hum of the afternoon, even in church – is so often when joy shows up, when clarity shows up, when God shows up. When we are weighed down with kraipalē and drunkenness and worries (sometime worrying, too, is what we do instead of living, instead of paying attention to God and neighbour) the moment that matters comes and we are so far from ready that we are like someone setting off a trap.

A few days ago, I went to John Hammond’s 90th birthday celebration. There was one remarkable speech after another, one testament after another to John as teacher and as friend. At the end, John himself spoke.

This was one of the worst years of his life, John told us. This was the year that Alice died.

And then John said that, simultaneously, This was one of the best years of my life. Maybe the best year of my life.

Here are the peaks and the valleys together. Here is someone who, to use John’s own language, has chosen the hard and life-giving work of entering into an apprenticeship with his grief. John has chosen not to numb his grief. And as consequence, this thing that he did not want and would not have chosen and that he would not wish on anyone else, the decline and death of a spouse, has become an occasion for growth, for drawing nearer to God, for becoming more fully human.

Advent, like Lent, is a time of waiting, of getting ready. In the busyness and bustle of this time, may we take Jesus’ advice, may we obey his command. May we not be weighed down kraipalē and drunkenness and worry and food and shopping and screens, may we not be so numb that Jesus’ coming catches us like a trap. Or still worse, may we not be so numb that we do not even notice when the star hangs in the sky and the Christ child enters the world. May we be ready, may we pay attention, may we hold the holy and hard silence that permits us to listen for the voice of that child and to welcome him once more into our hearts and into our lives.

Last Sunday after Pentecost Christ the King by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on by gracememorialpdx

November 25, 2018

Lessons:

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Psalm 93
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

We are in the bustle and the heat that is Jerusalem, the most distant and forgotten corner of the Roman Empire. Inside the headquarters of the occupying forces, Pontius Pilate sits at his desk. Pilate is thirty-five years old. He is a mid-level government bureaucrat here in the Middle East on a resume building exercise. He is a busy man and, when he gets back to Rome, he hopes to be an important one. In the meantime, Pilate wants things and people to proceed in a orderly and sensible manner. He doesn’t want to have to do paperwork. He doesn’t want to have to work overtime. And he wants the headache that has been building all day to stop.

On this day, Pilate has been struggling to concentrate on his work. It’s not just the headache – he has those all the time. Something else is nagging at him: an old memory. His mind is pulled back in time, skipping like a stone across the waters of his recollection, to the days of his childhood – to a time when he lived in a world of wonder and of imagination. Pilate keeps pushing the memory down, trying to bury it under the dust that coats everything. He just about succeeds.

Pilate is ready to go home. He is ready for a drink. It has been a full day of administration: of seeing prisoners, of determining who will be flogged, who will be released, who will be crucified. But there is one more interview. It’s with a carpenter and a disturber of the peace. The note on his desk says: The King of the Jews.

Pilate stands up and starts walking towards the interview that will haunt him for the rest of his life. An interview in which his atrophied imagination will entirely fail him.

And then he is in the cell with the prisoner. Pilate experiences a dim awareness, a tug, like something moving in the corner of his eye. An awareness that the man who stands before him is extraordinary. There is a gravity pulling Pilate towards this man. Pilate has the sense that, even though he holds all the power in this relationship, including the power to pronounce death, that this man, this calloused and dirty carpenter, somehow, holds all the authority. That it is as though this man were interviewing him. Pilate fights this awareness off.

A moment of heavy silence passes between them. They are alone. And Pilate can say or ask anything that he wants. He begins:

So. You’re the King of the Jews.

This is when most prisoners start to weep, or to rage, or to beg for their lives. But not this one. The serenity in his eyes is his terrifying. This man does something that no prisoner ever does. He looks right at Pilate. And he asks him a question:

Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?

Is that what it was like?

It is hard not to speculate about this scene, about one of be the most iconic exchanges in all of scripture. Pilate gets the rarest of things in all four of the Gospels: the opportunity to secure a private interview with Jesus – to secure the opportunity to talk, by himself, with God. In just about every other conversation that the Gospels record with Jesus (save, perhaps, for Nicodemus and for the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of), there is someone else hanging around – the disciples, the crowd, the tax collectors and sinners, the Pharisees, the centurions. Pilate, by contrast, holds Jesus alone for as long as he wants.

How tantalising is this? For the Christian, the idea of being alone with Jesus is awesome. Consider what you might ask – what you might say – you would be limited only by your imagination. What would you say to Jesus?

Now, hold those words in your mind – all the possibilities of what you might ask or what you might tell Jesus. And then consider what Pilate asks about. He asks about personal power: So, you’re a King. You have a place on the top of a hierarchy. You have money, you have property, you can tell people what to do, you determine who will serve and who will eat, you can control people’s lives.

Jesus responds to Pilate’s question the way that he often responds to questions. He poses a question of his own. John 18:34: Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me? The folks who translated the New International Version of the Bible give us a lively alternative: Is that your own idea?

Through this question, Jesus is pushing Pilate to resuscitate his almost deceased imagination, to call it forth like Lazarus from the tomb. This invitation to imagine – to say “what if?” or “I wonder?” – is one that he has extended throughout his earthly ministry. He has extended this invitation by telling awesome and playful and paradoxical stories, by asking provocative and even intemperate questions such as this one, by taking actions which tossed expectations on their side, like a ship in a storm. Do you ask this on your own? Is that your own idea? This is the question on which the whole interview hinges. And Pilate refuses to answer it. He is irritated that Jesus even poses it.

I suspect this is because Pilate is a man who has been taught to hold his imagination at bay, to fend off the very thought that the world could be any different than it is, that he could be any different that he is. He has been taught to retreat into a sad world of permanence, a world predicated on power, a world in which the Roman Empire will last forever, a world in which it is impossible to imagine anyone being motivated by anything other than fear and selfishness.

This is a picture of a world in which faith is obscured, in which it is been hidden by certainty. And Jesus challenges this certainty because he knows that faith is predicated on the imagination. Faith is all about possibility; it is about the wonder of change; about the dance of beauty; about encountering something new; about trust in possibility; about reversal; about the first being last; about meeting God in the persons of the least of these, our siblings; about experiencing the Kingdom of God not as something that happens after we die but is something that, with God’s help, we can build right now.

Those times when the Kingdom has cracked through our permanence and changed this world were made possible by the imagination – by acts of faith. By individuals saying, You know, we actually could do this. This is possible! We are few years past the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, a structure that mere days before it fell, we expected to stand for generations; that we expected to stand forever. I remember seeing the images of the wall falling and saying: That’s impossible.

Before the wall, there was a time when the end of slavery was impossible, when women getting the vote was impossible, when the end of apartheid was impossible, when the remarriage of divorced people was impossible, when broader marriage equality was impossible, when contraception was impossible, when the ordination of women was impossible, when we all knew that this county would never have an African American president.

Each act of imagination falls like a snowflake onto the roof of a prison. By itself, it looks like nothing. But, as it joined by another drifting piece of imagination and then by another, the snow of possibility builds up, higher and higher. And then, in what seems like an instant, the weight is too much. And the roof is down and the prisoners climb up and out into freedom.

When you talk to someone who has lived through such a moment – especially those who were in the prison when the moment came – they will often express a thought which is equal parts gratitude and disbelief: we never thought we would live to see this moment come.

So. What is impossible today? What is unimaginable? What have you been told is never going to change? Do you think this on your own or did someone else tell you? Is it impossible that hunger will ever end, that unemployment will ever end, that there will ever be a real place of dignity for the poor in our wider society or in the church, that economic vigour could mean anything other than frantic environmental degradation, that we might understand health care as a human right, that this country might have a healthy and sensible relationship with guns, that there might be a rule of life beyond selfishness and fear?

I’m glad that folks go to football games and hold up signs proclaiming John 3:16. It’s a beautiful passage. But the passage that I want someone to hold up at the next Seahawks game is this one: John 18:34. Is this your own idea? Did you think of this on your own or did someone else tell you? Is Jesus really that small? Is the kingdom really that distant? Can we really imagine nothing else? Is this how we thought the world was going to be when were were children? Are we so busy looking for Jesus sitting on a throne and holding a scepter that we don’t notice when he stands before us as a prisoner?

Let’s imagine for a second what Pilate cannot: that the impossible has happened – that the carpenter who stood before Pilate on that day was God. That God lived with us. And, now let us imagine something even more impossible: That, after Pilate sent that carpenter to be legally executed by a perverse justice system that he was resurrected. What if that were true? What else would be possible?

And now, let’s do something that Jesus did a lot of. Let’s tell a story about reversal in which we imagine that this peasant carpenter whose life was predicated on living with, and healing, and telling stories to the most suspicious of sort people is the king. Not Pilate’s kind of king, but another kind – one who believes that, in the greatest of kingdoms, the role of the king is to serve.

And, now, imagine that this king stands with you, close enough to touch. You are alone, he looks you in the eye. And he smiles.

Just imagine.

 

Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on by gracememorialpdx

Lessons:

Daniel 12:1-3
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8

 

 

What do we do when we hear a reading like the ones that we encounter today in Daniel in and Mark? Daniel says:

Michael shall arise. There will be anguish. Many of those who sleep in the dust will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

And then Jesus describes war and earthquakes and famines and he says:

This is but the beginnings of the birthpangs.

What do we do with apocalyptic Biblical passages? There are lots of them in scripture to choose from. What do we do with passages in which the Bible sure appears to tell us that God is the catalyst for violence, that God requires violence, sometimes that God is an active participant in violence?

This question is more or less inescapable at this time of year in which the lectionary, the schedule of readings that we follow from Sunday to Sunday, gives us one apocalyptic reading after another. For many Christians in parishes such as this one, these readings are variously troubling or embarrassing to us, maybe because we associate them with the Left Behind series of books and movies, with the notion of the rapture. Although, like a lot of troubling or embarrassing things, these passages are simultaneously fascinating to us.

Well, here is one of the things I believe. When someone or something leaves me feeling troubled or off balance, repelled and fascinated, that is an invitation to pay attention. Experience has shown me, for instance, that I when I notice feelings of dislike aversion in myself for another person, that person almost always has something to teach me. I remember some years ago asking for a meeting with a former boss – some things had happened since I had left that workplace – and opening my conversation with him by saying,

I knew that I had to talk to you because I really didn’t want to.

Apocalypse is similar. If we have a reflexive “yuck” feeling about this part of the Bible, if we are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by these passages, then maybe that is an invitation to pay attention, to ask:

What does this have to teach me about God and about my neighbour and about myself?

Now, I want to say something early and explicitly: what these passages do not and cannot teach us is that God is in the violence business. The cross makes that clear and irrefutable. Jesus suffers the worst possible humiliation, he endures the greatest possible agony, and after his return he refuses to respond to this violence with violence of his own. The resurrection is not about God coming back and exacting revenge on those who killed him. It is about God bringing new life and new light into the world.

The cross tells me that Richard Rohr is right when he says that the test for an authentic understanding of scripture and, more broadly, an authentic understanding of God is this: if an interpretation, a teaching, an action is less loving than the most loving person whom you know, then that thing isn’t from God.

Jesus coming back to torture or kill all the people who have believed wrong and lived wrong? That’s kind of less loving than the most loving person I know. So that can’t be how to understand Daniel, it can’t be how to understand Jesus when he talks the way that he talks today.

The word “apocalypse” translates into English as something like “unveiling” or as “revelation.” Hence, the final book of the Bible is sometimes The Revelation of John and sometimes The Apocalypse of John. It could just as well be The Unveiling of John.

And what is being unveiled when we encounter violence in the Bible? Well, as the theologian Mark Heim puts it, violence in the Bible is unveiling the truth, it is telling the truth. It is telling the truth about the human condition, about the conditions that lead to bloodshed, and in particular about the old connection between religion and violence.

Because religion, when it gets bent, when it loses sight of God and gets distracted or seduced by what St. Paul calls the world, has ended up in the violence business early and often. Somehow, when Emperor Constantine came along, when the other kings and emperors followed him, the symbol of Jesus – the symbol of the one who is murdered by the government for telling stories of freedom and handing out free food and health care – ended up on the banners of soldiers marching into battle.

There is no way to tell the truth without unveiling these things. As Mark Hein goes on to say, when we complain that the tales of Genesis, that the bloody sacrifices of Leviticus, that the fire for revenge in the Psalms, that Jesus talking about the birthpangs is too much, that these things are too sordid and too human to have any place in a book as holy as the Bible, then maybe we are admitting that these texts reveal the human condition altogether too well.

In Mark, Jesus says that the temple will be torn down, brick by brick. Peter, James, John, and Andrew ask him when this will be. And Jesus, who has elevated the non sequitur to an art form, who often answers questions with statements or stories that, at least at first, don’t appear to answer the question at all, says:

Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, “I am he,” and they will lead many astray.

And then he goes on:

When you hear of wars and rumours of wars?

Don’t be alarmed.

Wars and earthquakes and famines – this stuff going to happen. It is part of the human condition. Let’s name that, let’s unveil that. But let’s also, Jesus says – and this is fascinating and maybe surprising – not be alarmed by it.

Now, “do not be alarmed” cannot mean, “do not care,” or “do not take action.” Because we know that Jesus takes action in response to suffering early and often and always, that he calls us as his disciples to do the same. Maybe, therefore, “do not be alarmed,” means, “do not attach theological significance to this stuff, do not imagine for a second that this is something that God is doing or that God wants or that God requires or that proves that God is coming.”

If that’s right, then Left Behind and the televangelists and the door-to-door religion peddlers who love to point at this passage to prove that, well, the end is nigh, have things backwards. Violence isn’t telling us anything about what God is doing or when God is coming. Violence is telling us about humanity and about how far we sometimes stray from leading the lives of grace and mercy and kindness and love and freedom that God wants for you and for me and for everyone.

There is an amazing line that shows up today in the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is one of my favourite verses in all of scripture, when I last saw it printed in a bulletin or leaflet I cut it out and pasted it in my journal. It goes like this:

Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.

Not let us encourage one another, not let us teach one another, but let us provoke one another to love and good deeds.

Huh.

Weird as it is, maybe that line makes perfect sense. Because I think we all know about being provoked to goodness and to love. I suspect that all of us, as young people, received the difficult gift of a teacher or a parent calling us out on our behaviour, telling the truth about our behaviour, unveiling our behaviour and thereby provoking us to be better. I think that all of us, to this day, know about encountering art – several of the artists from PHAME are with us this morning and will be sharing their art with us as part of this service – that provokes us to be better. I think that all of us know about hearing someone’s story, a story of maybe searching or injustice or healing – I remember the woman who came here on a Sunday morning a couple of years ago and who told us about what it was like in Portland to try to function on minimum wage – and being provoked to being better.

And maybe that is what stories of violence in scripture, including stories – maybe especially stories? – that attribute that violence to God are doing. Those stories unveil human violence and they unveil our tendency to project human violence onto God, to make God in our own image, to say that God – who goes to the cross innocent and yet who will not make resurrection into an occasion of revenge –  somehow wants and needs our violence. Maybe these stories provoke us to say no! That isn’t and never was who God is. Maybe these stories of apocalypse and there to provoke us into following Jesus, into joining him in building a Kingdom of non-violence, of goodness, and of love.

Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Phil Brochard

Posted on by gracememorialpdx

Nov. 11, 2018

Lessons:

1 Kings 17:8-16
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

SOLACE IN OUR FIERCE LANDSCAPES

RIGHTEOUS APPEARANCES

GIVING WHAT YOU’LL NEVER MISS

A POOL IN THE DESERT

GIVE FOR LOVE

 

SOLACE IN OUR FIERCE LANDSCAPES

Near the turn of this century, the theologian Belden Lane wrote a provocative book called The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. In it he explored what he recognized to be the theology of desert and mountain landscapes, landscapes that are unsparing, wild, and fierce.

In his estimation, when we enter these landscapes, because of their danger and their sublime beauty, they teach us truths that we would otherwise choose to avoid.

This past week, yet again, has been a journey through fierce landscapes. We endured one of the most divisive election cycles in modern history. And, once more, we reeled from the senseless destruction of human life. 12 people killed with unfathomable precision.

And so we find ourselves in the wilderness yet again. We struggle to comprehend how a fellow human can enact such wanton cruelty. We struggle with the proliferation of guns solely created to killing humans as efficiently as possible. And we struggle to see how we will do this, see as a fundamental truth that we are in this together.

And in my home state of California, just within the past several days, horrific fires are burning faster than we had thought possible, leveling entire towns, taking the lives of those unable to flee fast enough.

This week has left many feeling lost in their own land, and I, for one, am grateful this morning to worship God in this place, coming together, seeking solace.

And I am grateful for the wisdom that emerges from the desert. Because in the end, Belden Lane writes, when we open ourselves to fierce landscapes, two questions emerge:

How much can you give?

How much can you love?

Again,

How much can you give?

How much can you love?

 

RIGHTEOUS APPEARANCES

Well this is a particularly uncomfortable Sunday to be wearing long robes and offering robust Eucharistic prayers, seated in a choice chair. Because that seems to be one of the threads running through our Gospel passage this morning–– the danger of appearing to be righteous.

It’s what Jesus says some of these scribes are doing, by wearing long robes of respectability, by the sitting in the seats reserved for those who know the Law best, by uttering long, impressive prayers. It’s not that these actions in or of themselves are at fault, but more that they can be used to cover practices of deceit.

These appearances mask the destruction of the widow, that iconic image of the vulnerable who is to be protected, but instead is systematically preyed upon until they are destitute. Beware disciples of the Christ! Surface appearances do not necessarily signal true righteousness. What does?

Being righteous, as Kathleen Norris, among others, reminds us, is consistently defined throughout scripture as being willing to care for the most vulnerable, the widow and orphan, the resident alien, the poor. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, the suit it wears, the status it holds, the power it commands. It asks those same questions,

How much does it give?

How much does it love?

 

GIVING WHAT YOU’LL NEVER MISS

To make his point clear Jesus turns our attention to money.

Funny thing about Jesus––he is not afraid to talk about money. Continuing this teaching about the appearance of a righteous life, he has his students watch as people put money into the temple treasury.

When you see rich people pouring in large sums, he says, it might appear that they are righteous. But then you might miss this widow. Now it’s likely that she is always overlooked, both figuratively and literally, I can’t imagine that her two pennies made much of a sound.

But if you judge a righteous life by appearances, you’ll miss a lot. And here’s where I appreciate the recently deceased biblical scholar Eugene Peterson. In contradistinction to the widow who gave her all, Peterson’s paraphrase reads that, “All the others gave what they’ll never miss” Gave what they’ll never miss.

How often have I done that? Given what I won’t miss? The scraps, the left-overs, the left behinds? Because of fear? Or protection? Security? Pretending that what I have is mine alone?

Maybe that’s why the tithe, or other proportional giving is so instructive. Because by nature of this spiritual discipline you know what you are doing, you can’t help but miss it.

When my wife Sarah and I began this practice of tithing I wasn’t sure at first. It wasn’t clear what this would mean for our student debt, or the little things––our nights out together, our cable. What I remember is the distinct feeling being able to trust that our money won’t own us. It’s not over, of course, I don’t know that it ever is. But year by year I have been taught that what I have–– my home, my money, my life itself, is not mine, but has been given to me that I and others might live.

 

A POOL IN THE DESERT

Belden Lane concludes his book on the solace of fierce landscapes with this ancient story of a community of monks living in the desert. For years the brothers chose one of their members to go into the city to beg. It was a difficult task, but one old monk took it on without complaint, enduring abuse in the city as he begged for the food and coins that the monks needed to survive.

But every trip was made more worse on his return to the monastery, as the afternoon sun beat down upon him and the burning sands met his every step. Marveling at the monk’s faith and endurance, God created a pool of cool water to refresh himself.

But the monk, thinking himself unworthy of this miracle, always passed by the well, stopping only to express his thanks and joy. Each night as he lay down to sleep, he’d look up through the window of his cell, and see a single bright star, giving thanks that God had placed it there for him to see.

After years of making this arduous trip into the city, as the monk was full of days, the brothers chose a younger monk to go with him to learn this task. They set off, and that day in the city the younger monk found it hard to persist in begging, accepting the abuse of some of the people of the city, and especially the grueling trek back under the harsh afternoon sun.

But then, on the horizon, the younger monk sighted a pool of cool water! He ran quickly to it, knelt down and began drinking deeply from the cool, clear water. As the the older monk passed the pool, he was torn. If he refused to drink the water, this miracle in the desert, he would have to tell the young monk why he did so. And it was likely that the young monk would feel ashamed of his impulsiveness and lack of devotion.

And, if the older monk did drink, he wouldn’t be able to offer to God the gift of sacrifice that he had been offering to God for so long. In the end, his heart remained with the young monk, so the old man ran back to the pool knelt down beside him and drank the cool, clear water, offering God glory for what had been given them.

But as they made their way home that evening, the old monk fell into a deep silence. He feared that he had disappointed God by what he had done. As he lay down to sleep that night, he looked through the small window of his cell, and this time saw the whole night sky lit by stars, just for him. His joy was overwhelming, too much to contain. He slept with the greatest peace, and his brothers found him dead in his bed the next morning.

And if they’d been able to hear the words on his lips that last fell from his lips, they would have heard the words of the prophet Hosea, that love is always better that sacrifice.

 

GIVE FOR LOVE

For we do not give simply out of sacrifice.

We give because we love. We give so that any child, regardless of their families’ income, can encounter art and beauty, trust and caring. We give so that for anyone who walks through these doors, the kingdom of God can be realized. We give so that one day on this block there will be space for the widow to be cared for. We give because we love.

You see, those two questions asked by the fierce landscapes of our lives are intrinsically and essentially connected,

How much can we give?

And,

How much can we love?

Try as we might, we cannot ask one without the other.

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Corbet Clark

Posted on by gracememorialpdx

October 28, 2018

Lessons:

Jeremiah 31:7-9
Psalm 126
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52

The last thing I do before I leave the sacristy to begin a service is to check my cell phone to make sure it’s turned off. Cell phones are a wonderful form of communication, that give us access to all kinds of information anywhere in the world. But they are also a major source of distraction for us. It turns out (I looked this up on the internet) that the average 40-something user looks at their phone 35 times a day, and the average 20-something looks 75 times a day. The latest iPhone operating system tells you every week how much screen time you had on average. Last week mine was 2 hours per day. Wow. My excuse is that I was following the World Series a lot last week.

Human beings are highly distractible creatures. We take in all kinds of sensory input – visual, auditory, touch – and our minds are active all the time. It helps make us the creative, imaginative creatures we are. But we can also be overwhelmed by everything around us. We know how critical it is, in work or in relationships or at church, to be able to focus on the main thing and not get bogged down in distractions, but it’s hard to do. If I ask you NOT to think about elephants for 15 seconds [pause] you just can’t do it. Your brain is telling you, “Don’t think about elephants! Don’t think about elephants!” It doesn’t work.

So we have to find ways to manage distractions so we can focus on what’s most important. Any teacher can tell you that highly distractible students need to find techniques to help them focus. For some it turns out that doodling actually helps them concentrate on what’s happening in class – which seems counter-intuitive. Others become adept at twirling their pencils in their fingers, which may be a distraction for the teacher but helps the student pay attention.

It’s not just students. We all have to find ways to manage the myriad of distractions that bombard us constantly. Across spiritual traditions, people have developed techniques of prayer and meditation that allow them to focus on the divine. Finding a quiet place away from daily activity, concentrating on one’s breathing, using a short repetitive phrase, walking slowly and mindfully – these are all ways of managing distractions and training ourselves to focus better.

Distractions surround us even in church. How often have I, sitting in the pew, come to the end of listening to a lesson and realized I remember nothing about it. Our attention inevitably wanders. “What a cute baby.” “I love the flowers on the altar – I wonder what kind they are.” “This music has too many notes.” “I wish that guy would stop coughing.” And in our church community life it’s the same thing – it’s easy to get bogged down in relatively small things and lose sight of the main thing, which is being the presence of Christ in the world.

Okay, so what does all this have to do with the gospel lesson this morning. The story of Bartimaeus is a perfect little allegory of how we come to faith in Jesus. Bartimaeus is blind – blindness is often used in the scriptures as a metaphor for not seeing or understanding God, of being blind to truth. He calls out to Jesus for mercy – the first step in faith is the appeal for help. Jesus responds by calling him to come and then asking what he wants. So faith involves movement towards Jesus and asking for what we need. Jesus restores his sight – he is able to see the truth and can go on his way.

It’s a beautiful story, but I want to consider it from a different perspective. What if it’s actually Bartimaeus’s blindness that allows him to focus on Jesus? Imagine the scene: it’s a crowded main road, with people doing business, going to market, people having conversations, children and dogs running around. Into the midst of this comes Jesus with his small band of followers. Perhaps people give him a look, but then they turn back to whatever they’re engaged in and let Jesus pass by. But Bartimaeus has no such distractions. He hears Jesus coming and is totally focused on him. When he hears Jesus’ voice among all the other voices, he goes straight to it. So in this case faith comes from not being distracted and focusing on the main thing. Not being sighted helps lead to faith. I’m reminded of the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (11:1)

To be able to do God’s work in the world we need to be able to put aside distractions and focus on the main thing. I think about that in the context of our parish planning about how to develop the church campus. To do this brings up all kinds of issues and problems – many of them important to different individuals. “How many bathrooms will there be?” “What about parking?” “How big will the stove in the kitchen be?” “What about air-conditioning?” But as important as all these may be, they are not the main thing. So we need to learn to develop the discipline of always coming back to the main thing, which is, how can we develop the campus so as to be the presence of Christ in this city, in the world?

It’s not easy to see God in the midst of the world. I think it’s a little like trying to tune into a radio station in the car in a remote area. There’s a lot of static and competing signals, and you have to adjust the tuning very carefully to finally zero in to hear the station you want. The world is full of noise. Tuning in to God requires focus and concentration, and it requires the discipline to be able to manage all the distractions of everyday life, in order to hear that “still, small” voice.

AMEN

 

 

 

 

Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost by The Rev. Martin Elfert

Posted on by gracememorialpdx

Oct. 14, 2018

Lessons:

Isaiah 53:4-12
Psalm 91:9-16
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

The comedian Hasan Minhaj is a second generation American. His father, like me, is an immigrant to this country. I come from Canada: Minhaj’s Dad, Najme, comes from India. Unlike me (I grew up in a stable and peaceful context in Vancouver, BC), prior to coming to the United States, Najme lived through some of the worst days on the Indian subcontinent. He saw awful violence after the departure of the British and after partition, violence that claimed north of a million lives.

Minhaj, like a lot of people of colour in America – like every person of colour in America – experienced racism growing up, he experiences racism to this day. Similarly, like many members of an immigrant  family, Minhaj did and does experience xenophobia. Minhaj tells the story, for instance, of being an adolescent shortly after the September 11th attacks and hearing a strange noise outside. He and his Dad went out to investigate what had happened and found that someone had smashed the windows of their car. Shortly thereafter the phone rang and a laughing voice on the other end demanded:

Where’s Osama?

Here’s the thing. Minhaj’s Dad had a totally different reaction to the vandalism and to the phone call that followed it than Minhaj himself. For Minhaj, as you might expect, as you could likely understand, this event was profoundly upsetting. He was shaken by it, angered by it. His Dad? Not so much. He just swept up the glass and went on with his day.

Compared to the violence that Najme had seen in India – well, this just seemed like no big deal. Getting your windows smashed occasionally, his Dad reckoned, was the price of admission for being brown and being an immigrant in America. It was a reasonable price to pay for the brutality that he had left behind and for everything that he had gained by coming to this country.

Minhaj found that this disconnect with his Dad just kept on happening, and not just in the disorienting days after September 11th. When Minhaj would experience the small and everyday acts of racism that someone who looks like him encounters in the United States, when he would endure the thousand paper cuts that we call by the name micro-aggressions (sometimes the aggressions weren’t micro at all – sometimes they were macro-aggressions), he would tell his Dad, he would relay these stories with anger and sadness. And his Dad simply couldn’t understand what Minhaj was so upset about.

No one is trying to kill you, his Dad would say to Minhaj in essence. What are you complaining about?

I heard Minhaj interviewed, I heard him telling these stories, on the wonderful podcast Invisibilia. The episode was about what psychological researchers call a human being’s Frame of Reference or, sometimes, simply their Reference Point. Our frame of reference is the perspective, the baseline against which we measure other experiences. And Najme’s baseline, his frame of reference, was of such radical suffering and injustice in post-partition India that every wrong that he encountered in America seemed kind of small and trivial by comparison.

In that interview, Minhaj is pretty deeply ambivalent about his Dad’s perspective on reality. On the one hand, Minhaj believes – rightly – that micro-aggressions are not okay, that small acts of racism, such as a clerk assuming that a brown-skinned customer is more likely to be a shoplifter than the white customer standing beside them, are wrong. On the other, he is glad for his father’s perspective. Glad for the reminder that it holds that, as much we get wrong in our country, we get a whole lot of things right. More than that, Minhaj is glad for his Dad’s reminder that life is good, glad for his Dad’s invitation into gratitude, glad for his Dad’s serenity.

Consider this: if someone smashes the window of your car and you feel neither fear nor anger, if the only cost to you if the cost of replacing the glass, well, that’s a kind of superpower.

The encounter that we witness today in the Gospel between John and James, the sons of Zebedee, and their teacher Jesus is about competing frames of references. In this conversation, the speakers apply two radically different reference points to the question: what does a good and holy and joyous life look like?

For the two brothers, for John and James, their point of reference for this conversation is worldly status and power. Growing up in the home of a modest fisherman, John and James have looked out the window and seen people with power, people who drive past their house in high-end carriages, people who are followed by servants, people who inspire not just respect in others but fear in others. And like many of us who have seen these things, maybe like you and me leafing through the catalogue of things that we can’t afford, John and James want in.

And so they go up to Jesus, full of eagerness. Their opening line is greedy and innocent at same time. Here is an echo of a pair of children trying to scam their way into the cookie jar:

Teacher: we want you to give us whatever we want.

Is Jesus smiling as he replies? What do you guys want?

And so they tell him: We want to sit on your right hand and your left in your glory.

Are he two of them are rubbing their hands in glee as they speak? Are they are dancing from one foot to another in anticipation?

Jesus, smiling no more, says:

You don’t know what you are asking for. 

That’s because Jesus’ point of reference for a good and holy and joyous life isn’t power. His point of reference is the cross.

In all four Gospels, Jesus speaks with this amazing and terrifying clarity about the cross as his future. It is an awful inevitability for him. And this knowledge, this reference point, profoundly shapes how he encounters reality.

When Jesus sees a suffering person – someone who is hungry or sick or lonely or lost or carrying a demon – because Jesus’ reference point is not money and privilege, he does not ask, “What can this person do for me?” and turn his back when the answer is “nothing.” Because his reference point is the cross, Jesus responds to his hurting neighbour with the compassion and solidarity of one who knows all about hurt himself.

When Jesus sees a wealthy and unjust person, because his reference point is not worldly status, he does not ask, “How can this person help my career?” and then begin to network. Because Jesus reference point is the cross, Jesus responds to his neighbour as one who knows all about what it is to endure injustice, and he challenges us and calls us to be better.

And when Jesus comes to a party – and this next part might be counterintuitive, I’m not sure, let’s run with it – because his reference point is not consumerism, where there is always something more and better waiting somewhere else, Jesus does not participate halfheartedly. Rather, because his reference point is the cross, because suffering and finitude and injustice are so clearly in his field of vision, he participates in celebration with gusto. Jesus is immune to what the kids call FOMO: Fear of Missing Out. He does not spend the party on his phone looking for something better to come along. There are an amazing number of passages in the Gospels about Jesus eating, an amazing number of passages about Jesus delighting in celebration within community. Jesus gets that this life is a fleeting gift to be lived fully right now.

Jesus tells his disciples, John and James and you and me, that following him means drinking from the same cup as him, being baptised the same way as him. That it means taking up your cross. He doesn’t warn us that grief and loss and hurt might be part of following him. He guarantees it. But here is the amazing thing: when our reference point shifts from worldly status and power and money and stuff to the cross, we may just be surprised to find that we discover not only hurt but also freedom, justice, and joy.

 

Please Welcome Dianne Delaney

Posted on by gracememorialpdx

Dianne Delaney

It takes but a moment to realize that Dianne Delaney is a serious woman.  Not boring.  Not glum.  Not stuffy.  Far from it.  She is joyful, funny and bursting with energy.  And she has really interesting things to say!  So we quickly agreed that we’d talk about hobbies, previous homes and the like AFTER she had shared a little about   those life experiences which have shaped her faith and ministry.

It was 1967.  The school was in East St. Louis, Illinois.  Dianne, still very new to teaching (she had been in school herself three years before) was teaching a class of 35 10th grade young women, 34 of them black, one white.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered days before, and a silent parade was passing in front of the school.  As Dianne told me, “Just before the passing bell to their first period, these young girls rose from their seats, went to the windows, and stood silently as that parade went by. Then they walked silently with heads held high to their classes.  Their dignity and silent witness had a profound effect on me.” 

Such courage and resolve created a hunger in Dianne to understand and identify with their protest.  Racial justice has been a part of Dianne’s spiritual and political “furniture” ever since.  Her work as director of an ethnically diverse daycare center in Santa Barbara, and later as a teacher there, only increased her passion for racial justice.  She was later inspired to lead a group of white junior high students to Navajoland, to learn a little about native American culture.

Along with this important work, Dianne has found time to raise two children, pursue watercolor painting, embroidery and the piano, work as an assistant to an Episcopal associate rector, and lead a Godly Play group.  She is currently a Democratic Precinct Committee Person right here in Multnomah County.   And she loves liturgy, sermons and singing, (which this writer thinks may have something to do with her joining Grace!)

Dianne ended our conversation by reflecting on that moment in the East St. Louis classroom over 50 years ago, describing it as “a touchstone for my spiritual journey.”  Her candor was a gift to me, and opened a window of personal reflection about the process of spiritual formation.    

So, when you meet Dianne at coffee hour, be prepared for a wonderful, serious, spirit-jolting conversation.    And plenty to think about afterwards!

Thank you, Dianne, for sharing your story.   We rejoice that your journey has led you to Grace.